Thursday, March 8, 2012

Colorful Interviews - Mark Lipinski

Today's interview is with Mark Lipinski. You know he will have some straight up thoughts on color!

Let's see what he has to say...

So Mark,

If I looked at a bunch of your quilts, are there three colors that you seem to use together frequently?
Reds, oranges and yellows.

Is there one color you find you always use?
Golds to butter yellow hues

Would that be your favorite color?Yellow? Well, that's close but oh, hell no! My favorite color is PINK!

Can you relate your favorite color/or palette to something in your childhood?
Every toy I coveted, which I never got, had pink in it (I craved Barbie). I had dozens of Olive Tonka's; Red Vac-U-Forms; Blue Wagons; Purple Stingray Bikes (with matching purple glitter banana seat), but what I wanted was PINK PINK PINK. Never got it -- that is until 1980, when Ralph Lauren began making oxford cloth shirts for me in PINK!!! I scrimped and saved until I could afford one. It wasn't long before pink became the IT color for men ... I bought pink EVERYTHING.

What color makes you feel happy? PINK makes me feel happy. Turquoise makes me feel happy. But, for some odd reason, I'm almost automatically drawn to warm colors like reds, oranges, yellows . . . and have to watch myself or EVERYTHING I make would be a combo of warm oranges, reds, and yellows.

Can you tell me why?
There is something very calming to me about pink, something soft and gentle, and happy. I relate to that. I like pretty, and pink is pretty to me. Of course, it's the forbidden fruit for a man (no pun intended) which could fuel my desire to buck the trend!

Is there a color you avoid?
There is no color, or variation of a color, that I don't like, but I'd never reach for green first.

Name 5 you think are "ODD" together.... or weird combos?
I loathe the brown/pink combinations (it didn't work for Baskins and Robbins and it doesn't work for me in quilts).
I also hate turquoise/orange combos! Blech!
Not an odd combo, but I'm so weary of the blue/yellow combinations. Boring and predictable.
While I think the tangerine/blue combo is a bit pretentious (it just tries too hard), I can't honestly say I don't care for it.

Thanks Mark! I appreciate your time! I agree with you on the red to yellow palette, I go back to those colors constantly. Through in some PINK and royal BLUE and I am really happy!

Ha ha ha do you know what a vacuform toy is? I spent hours playing with that thing! It used a sheet of plastic( which gave off the worst fumes) and it got heated up and placed over a form, then the kids would pumped like crazy on a handle until the melted plastic took the shape of the form. My four brothers and I loved it! We got burned by it, inhaled all that toxic stuff and thought it was great! We made mostly cars with it :0)

I have alot of trouble with blue... especially trying to use many different ones in a monochromatic. It seems there is only one of each kind of blue in my stash, and none of them work together. Consequently I don't use blue very often. I like the color, just hard for me to combine it with other colors, I guess.